October 7, 2015 – Effekt: A parent’s perspective on alcohol education

Mentor are determined to bring evidence-based practice to mainstream education. We will do this through the delivery of free regional seminars exploring best practice in prevention and showcasing CAYT quality-assessed programmes for young people.

On Wednesday 7th October we held the second seminar of the series, which looked at Effekt.

Effekt (also known as the Örebro Prevention program) is a universal prevention programme designed to decrease underage drunkenness by maintaining parents’ restrictive attitudes and expectations concerning underage drinking. The programme has quickly become the most utilised prevention programme aimed at parents in Sweden, and is now used in several other countries.

The Effekt programme works around parental leniency in relation to their own children’s use of alcohol. The programme works on three main stages:
1) Raising parental concern around alcohol use among young people;
2) Empowering parents by making them aware that their attitudes and behaviours matter;
3) Providing them with the right tools and techniques to prevent their child’s drinking behaviour.

On the day, programme developer Nikolaus Koutakis, from Örebro University, gave a very insightful overview of the programme development, implementation and evaluation.